


Most Games Are Lost

by linaerys



Category: Inception
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-16
Updated: 2010-08-16
Packaged: 2017-10-21 06:55:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/222185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/linaerys/pseuds/linaerys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For <a href="http://inception-kink.livejournal.com/profile"><img/></a><a href="http://inception-kink.livejournal.com/"><b>inception_kink</b></a>, <a href="http://community.livejournal.com/inception_kink/5987.html?thread=8548707#t8548707">this prompt</a>. How does Arthur know that Eames is in Mombasa?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Most Games Are Lost

“Does Cobb know you’re here?” Eames asks when he picks Arthur up from the airport.

Arthur shakes his head.

“Shouldn’t he?” Eames persists.

“Cobb’s not my keeper,” Arthur answers, although he should know better, because he can predict the next words out of Eames’s mouth, which are:

“We both know that’s not true.”

“Maybe I’m _his_ keeper.” Arthur shoos away a couple of kids in dirty t-shirts who are trying to carry his luggage for him. The air smells hot and dusty here, just like he imagined from looking at Eames’s postcards.

Eames taps a finger against his lips, drawing Arthur’s eyes, unwilling. “He does need one,” Eames murmurs. He slides his fingers deftly under Arthur’s and takes the rollerboard from him, leaving Arthur holding only the garment bag.

Eames already has a car waiting, which takes them away from the airport. The landscape becomes less dusty and more tropical. They drive along an ocean as purely turquoise as the last postcard Eames sent, the one inviting him here. The one that said, “Come. I have a job,” which Arthur took as a request for forgiveness.

“How is Cobb?” Eames asks.

“Do you care?” Arthur tosses back. He hears his voice go hard and wonders if maybe forgiveness wasn’t what the postcard, or his coming, was about.

“That was business,” says Eames, with a hint of real exasperation under his usual lightness. “And it was a long time ago. He’s gotten over it. Why can’t you?”

It’s so purely a rhetorical question that Arthur doesn’t even pretend to answer.

He watches the scenery go by. Eames is staying at one of the beach resorts, cut off from the real Mombasa by fences and what looks like a moat. Arthur gives him a look when they pass through the security gates, and continues looking at him until Eames shrugs and says, “I know, but the mark is staying here. And they make a bloody amazing Mai Tais.”

“What is the job?” Arthur asks as he follows Eames up to their room. Their suite. It does make sense, if they are going to be spending a lot of time in dreams, not to be wandering in and out of each other’s rooms at all hours of the night.

And it’s an excuse, for exactly what is going to happen here even if Arthur doesn’t forgive him. Forgiveness has never had anything to do with it.

“Cobol engineering,” says Eames. Of course. They were always good for business in this part of the world; they probably kept Eames on retainer now. “They want to know what Driscoll is bidding for the dam repairs so they can undercut it.”

Arthur unzips his garment bag and starts taking out his clothes to hang up. They aren’t too badly wrinkled. “Why don’t they just bribe someone?”

“Apparently Driscoll has the usual politicians bought up tight.” Eames lies back on Arthur’s bed and puts his arms above his head. The fabric of his shirt is thin enough that Arthur can see the darkness of underarm hair, nipples. Or he's imagining it. He looks back to his suits.

“What do you need me for?” Arthur asks.

Eames smiles. “Oh, so many things, darling.”

Arthur almost wants to ask: “Should we just get it out of the way?” They could be naked together in a few minutes, and it would be just as good as Arthur remembers. Better, even, because the dreams and memories never live up to the reality.

But part of the game is who will give first, how long Eames will tease until Arthur breaks. How long Arthur will hold out until Eames’s light banter gives way to something more serious.

“I’m going to shower and shave, and then you can tell me more about the job.” Arthur half expects Eames to ask to join, but he leaves Arthur and goes into his own room.

Arthur emerges, feeling more human after the long flight from Singapore, where Cobb is biding his time between their previous job and the next. Eames gives Arthur an appreciative look up and down. “You look like something out of a Graham Greene novel,” he says. “You must have had fun shopping for this trip.”

Arthur shrugs. He’s wearing all linen, complete with a linen waistcoat handmade for him in Hong Kong. He hates that it’s going to wrinkle as soon as he sits down, but Mombasa is too hot for anything else.

Eames takes him to have a drink at the beach side bar. This close the equator, the sun sets promptly at six. It’s already sitting on the horizon. Any moment it will sink out of sight.

True to his threat, Eames does order a Mai Tai. Arthur orders a beer. It’s the only thing that seems remotely appropriate.

“You never did tell me how Cobb is,” Eames says when their drinks arrive. He pulls out the orchid that decorates it, licks the liquid off the stem, and tucks it behind his ear.

The flower behind his ear looks oddly attractive on him, and not nearly as ridiculous as Arthur would have expected. Two beautiful things together. Arthur reaches up to take the flower, and Eames takes hold of his hand, and doesn’t let go when Arthur brings it back to the table.

This isn’t the usual game, and so Arthur lets him keep hold of it, and tries not to be too distracted at the movements of Eames’s fingers on his.

“He’s heartbroken,” says Arthur, surprised into honesty. “Mal was his whole world, and then she killed himself, and everyone thinks he did it?” Arthur sighs. “He’s as good as he can be. He’s not even thinking about—you’re right, he is over it.”

“I never betrayed him. Or you,” says Eames. “It was a different job. Your loyalty is commendable, but—”

Arthur pulls his hand away. “What do you need my help with?”

“I need you to build the dream,” says Eames. “I’m not . . .” He tilts his head to one side. “It wants your elegant touch.”

“Whatever happened to my lack of imagination?” Arthur asks.

“Did I say that?”

Arthur nods. “Many times.”

“Your imagination is . . . very focused. Doesn’t branch out much, but then again it doesn’t need to.”

“Let’s see it, then.”

Eames doesn’t work in sketches, like Cobb—they have to go into the dream to see the world he’s constructing. It’s a ballroom, the partiers populated by Arthur’s mind. He sees Eames there, dressed in white tie, sipping a drink. Mal and Cobb are there too, dancing with each other.

“You always dress me beautifully,” says Eames, following Arthur’s gaze. “But it doesn’t feel right, does it?”

Arthur explores. Eames is correct, it doesn’t feel right. Or perhaps it feels too right, too worn in, as if this ballroom has been used for a thousand other parties, and the smoke from their candles has settled into a patina on the wood, on the upholstery, even on the revelers themselves.

“It’s too comfortable,” says Arthur. “You’ve made this up like one of your family’s parties. It’s home to you, and it will feel that way to the mark. He needs to be off guard. He needs to be in a place that is too perfect to be real. He needs to be—”

“In one of your dreams,” says Eames. He slips Arthur the reins of control, and Arthur changes things. The polish on the wood becomes cleaner, darkens to black. The crystals in the chandelier sparkle more brilliantly. The mismatched paintings in gilt frames are replaced with murals, colors gleaming, subjects forgettable.

“You have a knack for the banal and overblown,” says Eames.

Arthur chooses not to be insulted. “It will work better this way. The mark won’t trust anyone here. He’ll need the safe to store his secrets.”

The dancers whirl now in near perfect symmetry. Cobb, Mal and Eames are no longer among them, erased along with Arthur’s alterations. They would have been more comfortable in Eames’s creation.

The timer wakes them then. Arthur sits up first.

“Let me try again,” says Eames.

They go under again, and Arthur finds himself dancing with Eames. Cobb and Mal are back. The Brahms piano waltz is playing. Eames leads.

“Did you want to practice, or did you want to dance?” Arthur asks.

“Can’t I do both?”

“It’s my dream? Can’t I lead?” Arthur asks, as he twirls under Eames’s arm, with far more grace than they would ever manage awake.

“I don’t know, can you?”

The room spins, and the timer wakes them again.

Eames surprises Arthur again by retiring to his room without making even the most sarcastic of passes at him.

He wakes the next morning to find Eames packed and gone, and a note that says, “Thank you for the dream,” on the pillow next to his.

The room is paid for the next few nights, so Arthur stays. Something tells him Eames hasn’t gone far, that this is just the next phase of the game. The game whose rules Eames writes, the game where Arthur is forever playing catch up.

He goes to the tourist sites, the big fort by the sea, the tusks. He explores Mombasa’s old town, walking between the whitewashed facades. He goes off the beaten track, where the whitewash has faded yellow.

He finds Eames in a coffee shop, the part of his hair all that’s visible above a Francophone newspaper. Eames doesn’t look surprised to see him. “I’m done chasing you, Arthur,” he says.

“So it’s my turn? What about the job? Don’t you need me to build the dream?”

“I can build it without you.”

“What about”—Arthur realizes his voice is getting loud and quiets it—“I came here for you.” That should be enough. Eames wins this round.

Eames smiles enigmatically. “Well, then,” he says.

Eames has a room above the coffee shop. It has fans but no air-conditioning. Arthur is sweating through his linen. Droplets bead Eames’s upper lip. Arthur’s room at the resort will be cool as a refrigerator, but he doesn’t suggest it. This is how it happens for them, in dingy hotel rooms, in alleys, on chairs meant for dreaming.

Arthur tastes the salt on Eames’s lips, on his neck. Eames kisses him like he’s drowning, like he’s begging for it, like the previous two days never happened. They strip down quickly so the fans can cool their skin. He jacks Eames off as they slide together on the sheets, and he kisses Eames so he can taste it when he comes, when their kisses become broken.

“Want you,” says Eames as they continue kissing afterward. Arthur wants to see Eames’s face; he doesn’t want to see. So when he opens Eames with his fingers he watches Eames mouth instead of his eyes. Eames’s lips part, he lick them, he says, “Please.”

He turns Arthur over half way through so he’s on top, a practiced move that reminds Arthur of his strength, of the times Arthur’s relied on it. It’s easier this way for Arthur to close his eyes and do nothing but feel: heat and sweat and then come, his own and Eames’s.

They doze together in the afternoon, without a sheet, as the fan dries their skin.

Arthur wakes after sunset. “You came here for you,” says the note by his pillow. This time Arthur doesn’t look for him. This time Arthur gets on a plane and goes back to Singapore.

**

“Eames is in Mombasa,” Arthur tells Cobb after they take Saito’s job. Arthur doesn’t know this because of postcards now, but because he is paying a small amount every month to a man who keeps an eye on Eames.

Because someday the game he and Eames play is going to start all over again, and Arthur wants some warning, even if he doesn’t know the rules.


End file.
